21 hours ago, Bass wrote

My only gripe is MS's insistence to redefine long established software release cycle terminology. Just stick with "Alpha", "Beta", and "RC". You aren't hip or edgy by using "release preview (RP) and customer preview (CP)" like they mean anything to me. Just being confusing for no real reason.

The problem is that Google ruined the term "beta".

Also why not make a clean library c++ library for WinRT instead of some non-standard proprietary c++ extension.

They did.  The Windows Runtime C++ Template Library (WRL) allows for creating/consuming WinRT apps/components with standard C++.

1 day ago, evildictaitor wrote

I think the problem (once again) is that Microsoft made the mistake of telling people what it was doing, rather than just releasing it and getting a pile of celebrities and adverts to say "wow - now my desktop is swooshy! Why have an iPad 3 when you can have a Windows 8".

/snip

I kind of agree, but then again, there are folks complaining that Microsoft is being too secretive wrt Windows 8.  Anyway, Microsoft wants Metro apps to be ready when Windows 8 is released, so they have to release something before the actual release.  They could release it just to devs, I guess, but it would leak, so what would be the point?  Second, Microsoft does want feedback and they've made alterations based on user feedback (feedback that isn't of the , "What you're doing is totally wrong" variety).  And they need the feedback to get bug reports.  Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn't control the hardware; they need to run the OS on many, many hardware configurations, of which they control none.  Apple needs their OS to run on 6 or so hardware configurations, all of which they control.

1 day ago, figuerres wrote

I think the windows 8 / metro / startmenu thing is like the windows media center but in reverse.

Microsoft said more or less "not many folks use media center the stats show us this fact" but in the last 2 versions of WMC very little has been done to promote it.  it's a "Hidden feature" that i bet 70-90 % of users have never even seen and even if they have seen it very few of them have a cable card slot to get use of one of the key features .. or a tuner card for that matter. so now it's going to be an addon for windows 8.

I rather suspect that the folks at MS have a fear that if they did not push metro it would not take off and go mainstream and wind up like WMC soon down the road.

so they "bet the farm" on it.

problem is that for a can't even begin to count how many users  the new metro start screen will be a deal breaker as it stands now with forcing it on users.

IMHO they should have just done two versions of windows and let folks pick the one they want.

if metro and the tablet are as great as they think they are the market would show this with the sales numbers....   that's a really good "stat" to go by.

there are problems with the two versions idea yes, but I see problems with the "all in one" method also.

I disagree with your conclusion and I think your conclusion contradicts the first portion of your comment.

I look at the Office Ribbon.  I think (as does Microsoft) that the ribbon UI is hands-down superior to the old Office UI,  But if Microsoft had given folks the option of turning off the ribbon so they could use the old UI instead (an option that many folks demanded before Office2k7 RTMed), then lots of folks would've chosen to stay with the old Office UI, not because it's better than the new ribbon UI, but out of force of habit or fear of change.  "Letting the market decide" by allowing an option to turn off the ribbon would've been stupid, because the inferior UI might've won out based on habit and/or fear.  So Office would be stuck with the old UI forevermore.

 It would've been very sad for Microsoft to spend lots of time and money on developing the Office Ribbon, then get scared and offer users the ability to use the old menu-based UI, and see everyone pick the old UI out of habit or fear, so that the clearly better ribbon UI fades into oblivion, never being given a true chance to gain traction.

1 hour ago, GoddersUK wrote

*snip*

Explain, if you will, how the left sucks more than the right.

 

WMPs UI wins hands down (although the disc data it downloaded off the web was a bit confused... that was a DVD, not a blue ray). I couldn't notice any difference in playback quality (although I'm not usually very sensitive to such issues anyway) however I may not be using the default codec in WMP so that statement may be irrelevant.

Oh and WMP never gives me annoying popups asking me to register... 

 

 

PowerDVD sucks too.

My opinion on WMP sucking as a DVD player (I don't think it sucks as a general video/audio player), is that in the past I found that for certain DVDs WMP wouldn't allow me to freely move the seek pointer so I had to use the forward/backward buttons, while other players allowed me to freely seek for those particular DVDs.

But note that comment to which you responded was more saying that WMP sucked as a DVD player compared to WMC (though I think WMC probably has the same seeking behavior). 

I'm more irritated by above posts praising OSX's DVD playing experience, when OSX's DVD player is garbage, akin to Power DVD.  Above it's claimed that an OEM bundling PowerDVD (or some other 2rd party DVD player) would drive a customer to OSX, as if the DVD player that Apple bundles is so much better tha PowerDVD.  It ain't.  It sucks bad, and has for 10+ years.

10 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

WMP is a terrible DVD player anyway.  That's why I don't use Windows to watch weekly Netflix rentals. Besides, WMP is more suitable to play BT DVD backups, I suppose that's its sole purpose now. 

I think my main concern is, is it a slippery slope? I mean how many more are they going to cut ?  or more specifically, how many more are they going to cut that will affect me? Cutting things are necessary, but, at what cost?

I dont' think many folks use WMP to play DVDs.  IT does suck (though not as bad as OSX's DVD player).  WMC, however, does not suck at playing DVDs.  But few use WMC at all.  But there are those that swear by WMC and think that it's vital to their user experience, but I'd think that they'd be willing to pay $10 or whatever to download WMC if it's that necessary to them.

9 hours ago, GoddersUK wrote

*snip*

If your DVDs conform to the standard they should play on all DVD players/software, right?

 

*snip*

Which may be technically illegal since it uses decss (although, according to wiki, the one case that came to trial over decss resulted in an aquital)... 

But yes, I don't see how this will help anyone. Users will just use VLC/decss and not pay the license fee, so the DVD industry loses money; MS's OS will be crippled and open the door to Apple ads about PCs not playing DVDs and general ridicule and the consumer has to go to extra effort to play their discs. 

Wow, you guys are so scared of Apple.  Apple removed floppy discs and didn't worry about ads saying "OMG, Macs can't read floppy discs!!".  Apple removed optical drives altogether from MacBook Airs, its #1 laptop seller, and didn't worry about "OMG, MacBook Airs can't read optical discs!!!" ads.

Besides that, what's it matter anyway?  I recall the Apple "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ad that claimed that PCs couldn't import pictures taken by Japanese digital cameras.  Totally false, but it didn't stop Apple from running the ad anyway.  Apple's going to run whatever ads they want to run regardless.  Competitors should stop cowering in their boots about what Apple's going to do.

Lastly, Apple's main product isn't the Mac, and you don't see many Mac ads anymore.  Their main product is iPad/iPhone, which can't play DVDs (and can't to a whole LOT of stuff, but you don't see Apple scared to ship the product worrying about ads against the things that iPad cannot do).

19 hours ago, 01001001 wrote

AFAIK DVD Player is still in OS X Mountain Lion with no plans to take it out.

Pop a DVD in a Mac and it just works. Not the special edition OS X, just the regular one.

With that said, most people use either iTunes, Amazon on Demand, Vudu, or PSN to rent movies. Still, Mac does media way better, and as much as Steven wants to copy Apple, he's not willing to go the last 10%, just like Bill Gates wasn't on Windows 1.0. Unfortunately it's no longer 1985 and people can tell the difference now.

Enjoy your corner cutting masterpiece.

The OSX DVD player is a piece of garbage, though.  It hasn't been updated in 10 years and is very much like the 3rd-party DVD players for XP, the ones that folks are suddenly decrying as unacceptable.  Well, OSX DVD player is exactly like those.  Except even worse, what with the mimicing of a physical DVD player controller and whatnot.  So those of you saying that using a 3rd party DVD player bundled by the OEM for Windows 8 is horrible, well it's no more horrible than the DVD player that Apple bundles with OSX.

13 hours ago, Bass wrote

Motorola initially offered Microsoft a license for their patents but Microsoft refused. I can't say I'm surprised by this.

Welcome to the enviable conclusion of the software patent wars. All software becomes illegal.

Motorola's "offer" was a 4 billion dollar per year license fee for their 50 H.264 patents, which is roughly 1.2 million times more than what Microsoft pays for each of the other 2300 H.264 patents.  Motorola's "offer" was bull.

Go back a couple decades, and the same arguments were being made by those that decried GUI and declared that command lines were the height of UI design.

I recall similar arguments when Apple became the first computer maker to drop support for floppy disks.

I'm not even sure what the big deal is, since the complainers in this thread can easily program their own start menu in about an hour.  Maybe you guys can use it as a business opportuinty and sell your solution to the public.  Those that don't want to or can't program their own start menu can use Stardock's already available start menu.  Another option is to just pin frequently used apps to the task bar so that you can avoid using start menus or start screens altogether.

Back in the day, I was of the mindset that software should provide all sorts of user options (e.g. an option to turn on Start Menu, or an option to turn on the pre-Ribbon UI in Office, etc), but I changed my mind a few years ago.  Adding user options adds bloat and means you have to maintain multiple settings going forward (for example, forever maintaining the old menu/toolbar UI in Office would be assinine), and lots of times it indicates a lack of confidence in what you're doing.  Rather than do that, you do the real work to determine what is better, and then go with it.

3 hours ago, figuerres wrote

*snip*

 

Rory ?  he has nothing to do with the way things are....

perhaps you fail to understand that some of the folks who are not happy (like me for example) are the same folks who have been here for a *very long time* and used to be part of the other discussions you refer to.  but things have changed; I have every right to say what i think as long as i am not attacking people and as long as i am "within bounds" so to speak.

some of us have been very pro microsoft for a long time and we see things that we feel are going the wrong way.   by posting our thoughts here there is a small chance some folks at microsoft will see the post and act on it.

No that's not for sure but it's a thing we can do before we go to the next step.

in the end i and the companies i work with will vote with our money and that in the end will get microsoft to listen, if sales drop they will get the message for sure.

and none of that will stop me for beeing a part of a good topic when i see one.  I still have code to maintain that uses .Net and WPF and WIndows Forms and so on....

I didn't mean to suggest that Rory's departure caused the deterioration of this forum.  I just used his departure as a time reference.  There is no question that this forum is a wasteland relative to what it was in the past.

As for "being part of a good topic" because you still have to maintain ".NET, WPF, and Windows Form" code, isn't the "Tech Off" forum more suitable for that?  If you ask a question on maintaining .NET/WPF/WinForms code on the Coffeehouse forum, you'll get "answers" that consist of how horrible those platforms are and how Microsoft should dump them for Objective C or some such.  hehe

21 minutes ago, Bass wrote

*snip*

Linux is a far superior kernel versus both WinNT and WinCE both in features and platform support.

*snip*

If Microsoft is to be successful in the future, they should dump WinNT/WinCE and Trident entirely and built on top of Linux or *BSD/XNU and Webkit.

I really don't want there to be just one kernel or just one HTML engine in existence forevermore.  Nor do I suscribe to the school of thought that says that Unix (and its variants) represent the be-all and end-all of OS design.  It's absurd.

I also question your assertion at how superior Linux is.  There's a reason why Android NEEDS multiple cores to run half-decently.  There's a reason why my DVR takes forever to boot up.  Linux ain't all that.

As for "spending money to get NT up to snuff", I assume you refer to the phone space.  Microsoft is already spending money on slimming down NT anyway for Windows 8.  I've heard that Windows 8CP boots very fast and runs on very small memory footprint compared to Windows 7.  Since they're doing that work anyway, may as well apply that same work to the phone space.

Finally, check out this video and tell me how WebKit or Linux kernel is so superior, 'cause I don't see it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkifKnNmeVg

16 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

*snip*

People keep complaining, and some Fanbois keep stating that Microsoft have taken the right decision long term, but they have been unable to commit to anything on the desktop for the last decade, and the phone is also following suit.

I lost my faith in Microsoft a little while back, and anticipated that Windows Phone would be chopped and changed like they have done so well before.

Apple have gone from iOS 1 to iOS 5, and I am awaiting Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to upgrade my 2.3 version.

Only a fool would buy a Lumia 900 phone now. If you have one, take it back.

It would seem that so-called "tech savvy" folk that post to this forum can't even tell the difference between incremental upgrades of the same OS (eg. iOS1 thru iOS 5) and a transition from one OS to an entirely different OS (WP7 to Apollo).  Comparing a WP7 to Apollo transition to the incremental upgrades from iOS1 to iOS5 is totally meaningless. 

And you bring up the fact that you are wating to upgrade your Android to ICS.  Yeah, you, along wiht 97% of Android users.  ICS was released ~6 months ago, yet only 3% of Android uses have been able to upgrade to it.  That upgrade path may as well not exist at all.  Most will be onto a new phone by the time they get to upgrade their current Androids.  Yet you cite that as an example of how things shoudl work. lol

This Coffeehouse forum has gone in the toilet ever since Rory left.  Mostly what we get now are malcontents and Microsoft-bashers.  There use to be lots of tech talk on this forum and actual insight, but those days are looooong gone.  And that's why the userbase of this forum has dropped down to fewer than a dozen regulars.  The ones remaining are mostly the malcontents that can sit around and pat themselves on the back at how brilliant they are (they equate cynicism with brilliance).  The rest that remain are those few individuals that have the stomache to put up with the nonsense constantly spewed by the malcontents.

Loads fine in both IE9 and Chrome for me, with no speed advantage to either browser.

6 hours ago, Bas wrote

I'm just wondering who the sheriff is.

Reggie Hammond

1 day ago, SoapSudz wrote

Sorry.... the link that you give DOES NOT change the behavior.  All it does is remove the menu option of adding the site as a 'pinned' item.  If you are someone who drags website URLs to your desktop, and want it to save the file as an actual link INSTEAD of a .website pinned site, then all you have to do is...   CLICK AND HOLD THE SHIFT KEY when you drag the file.  It will save a URL link instead of the .website link - which causes all sorts of other problems when you click on it.

Thanks.  That tip about "CLICK AND HOLD THE SHIFT KEY while drag/dropping" is good to know.  It's not all that discoverable.  I think the IE team should implement Right-Button-Click-Drag, so on the drop a context menu is displayed giving options of whether to create a pinned site shortcut or a regular internet shortcut (and they should support Right-Button-Click-Drag/Drops for picture links, where the context menu would give options for creating a .url file, a .website file, or a picture file; currently, as has been the case for years, drag/dropping a picture link creates a .url file with no option to create a picture file).

And I have to correct the first post where it says that drag-dropping a url from the address bar to the desktop creates a ".website file that doesn't save the actual url but instead the root of the site (and the root's page title)".  I've not seen that.  Every .website file I've created is a link to the actual page whose URL was dragged rather than the root of the site.

Lastly, if one opens a .url and .websiite file in notepad, one can see that the .website file conatins information that is a superset of the info contained in a .url file.  So, I speculated that one could change the extention of a .website file from ".website" to ".url" so that double-clicking it will produce the old "Internet Shortcut" file behavior.  I tested that, and it seems to work.  That would "fix" any old .website files that one had created when one would've rather created a .url file.  Web shortcuts created henceforth would be best using the "CLICK AND OLD THE SHIFT KEY" solution whenever one wants a .url rather than a .website file.

3 hours ago, Bass wrote

Microsoft has contributed/released Apache licensed code before (even GPL code before).

 

I don't think the API of libfreenect is all that complicated. It has wrappers to a bunch of different languages (including C#), I doubt Microsoft will support Java or Python while libfreenect does.

 

If Microsoft likes it or not, a lot of hackers and academics use Linux for their research. And you know Microsoft would never support Linux for anything interesting, so there will always be a niche for libfreenect no matter how "great" Microsoft's own API will be.

 

I should say, the way the write this, it sounds like they are only releasing a driver for Kinect. _IF_ they release the computer vision middleware as well then it's a whole different story.

You say that this is pointless, then ramble on about Linux.  Well, "whether you like it or not", there are lots of researchers and hobbyists that don't use Linux.  I'm a hobbyist myself, and don't touch Linux and want nothing to do with Linux, and this Windows Kinect SDK would be great for me, so it's cearly not "pointless".  Linux geeks think that they are the center of the universe and everything is about them.  Well, not everything is about them, and whenever a software kit is released it should not be dismissed as "pointless" just because that kit doesn't cater to the Linux crowd. 

I reported this to Connect as a bug against IE9 beta, and it was closed as a duplicate, but it's still not fixed. 

I got the problem all the time with IE9 beta (never with IE7 or IE8), then I installed IE9RC1 expecting it to be fixed, and I didn't run into the problem for the first two days, but then sure enough, the bug has started occurring again.  I stopped using IE9 beta because of this, and as good as IE9 RC1 is, I won't use it if this bug isn't killed; I don't have the patience to jump through hoops to use a browser.

I want to know if anyone else if running in to a problem I've had ever since installing IE9 beta, and if so, what they might have done to fix it.  My problem is that when loading any given web page, I'd estimate that there's a greater than 50% chance that IE9 will not display the pictures contained within that page.  Right clicking on the blank areas where the pictures should be and doing "Show Picture" does nothing.  If I execute the "Duplicate Tab" command a few times, eventually I'll get a tab that shows the page with the actual pictures.

I put up with this for a while since this is beta, but I've grown sick of it.  I searched around the internet and saw a few posts about others having the problem, but no solutions.  At this point I'm ready to just uninstall this thing and go back to IE8; either that or just use Firefox 100% of the time (I currently split time between FF and IE).

If anyone has any info on this problem, I would greatly appreciate it.

45 minutes ago, intelman wrote

What is up with DirectWrite? How come it looks fine on some pages and horrible on others? To me this is the most significant change of the web. Text readability on digital displays will only become more important.

Firefox 4 also seems to have adopted this notion that we should be using directwrite.

This blog entry by the IE team might share some light on that: Nov 3, 2010: Sub-pixel Fonts in IE9.

2 days ago, Ian2 wrote

I've censored this for Channel 9 but my daughter, who is 9, can see the uncensored version right now.

Surely 4 letter words have some auto alerts?

I understand parental concerns, but I don't want "auto alerts".  I'm an adult, and I want to be able to see what the "top songs" and "top videos" are without an alert being thrown in my face about it.  If the Zune team wants to add more partental controls* that a parent can turn on if he/she wishes to, then that's fine, but don't inconvenience the rest of us that don't need to be shielded from what the top videos actually are.

* The Zune desktop client already does have some protections.  I don't know the extent of it, but if you subscribe to a channel and receive an "Explicit" song as a result, you can't play the song unless you are signed in.  If you try to play the song while not signed in, you get an alert: "Must sign in to Zune with your Windows Live ID to play explicit songs" or some such.  Which I find to be a pain already, but I've accepted it (no choice in the matter).  But I don't think adults should be involuntarily "protected" from song titles while browsing the zune marketplace.

More likely they know that 99% of people don't read it anyway.  Anyway, there's a print button if you want to print it out, not to mention the scroll bar.

magicalclick said:

Only you. Mine is always fine and I just tested it. Meaning you may have got a virus. My bro got a virus that change Google, Live, and other search result of the link. It looks fine, but they are point to some junk sites.